The Accidental Archaeologist

Carolina Barbeque

It’s now the morning of Day Six, but it feels like we’ve been at this a lot longer. Most of the students decided to go out to a local bar on Friday night, so yesterday morning’s start was a little rough. Many of them were walking quite gingerly and squinting in the strong Carolina sunshine. I try to to be somewhat sympathetic to that sleep-deprived/hungover slow morning state, as long as it’s just once in awhile, and this gang so far has been amazingly well-behaved, polite, and generally popular with the few locals we’ve dealt with so far. I was worried we might have the one or two loose-cannon college students acting up, but I’ve seen none of that with this group (to my considerable relief). So, I resisted the instinct to make get them up to usual dig speed right away, and I let them drag their feet a bit.

Mark was off to Norfolk yesterday morning to drop off two of our younger volunteers, who had to head back to Michigan for the start of term. This left me totally in charge for the first time this project, and it wasn’t as hectic as I thought it would be. I had one team working in the first trench removing a big shell midden (kinda like taking out concrete with a shovel), and I had the other two teams continuing work on the third trench. As y’all can imagine, folks were very quiet, though someone put an iPod on a speaker, so we had tunes to keep everybody happy. The big difference between field ops when Mark’s around and when it’s just me is pretty noticeable. Mark and I together end up doing a fair amount of debating over interpretations and the general noise and commotion level can tend to go up a bit (not in a bad way, of course, just a general level of excitement). When it’s just me, it’s quite a bit calmer and quieter, which is pretty much exactly what the gang needed for the morning.

In the late afternoon, Scott had the grand opening of his new museum, Hatteras Histories and Mysteries, which is packs an amazing amount of information and artifacts into what is essentially a very small space. He’s obviously put a lot of time and effort into this place, and we’re really hoping it’s a success for him. Mark and Andy went to the opening to lend it a bit of official “celebriy,” and Scott advertised to the locals to bring in their own collections of artifacts for Mark to look at and give them an on-the-spot analysis. Meanwhile, we kept digging away in the sunshine. The storms appear to be gone for good this week, and we’re left with a cool breeze, bright sunshine, and a generally tropical feel to the whole thing. That’s probably why the dig has taken on such a relaxed atmosphere, too.

In the evening, we had a party for Andy’s birthday. The local grocer, Mr Conner, put on a big Carolina barbeque at his house down the road. It’s a huge, beautiful house tucked into the woods and backing up against the marsh. Reminds me of my great-grandmother’s house down in South Carolina. For dinner, we ended up with the best example we could give these Brits of Southern cooking and hospitality. They were floored by how amazingly generous everyone here has continued to be on this island. It was a great success all around, and Andy even recieved a few gifts from various folks. We all left absolutely stuffed and in very high spirits.

Gotta run now. Today is a relaxed day of artifact washing in the morning, and then the official twinning ceremony this afternoon between Manteo and Bideford. We’ll be heading up to Manteo at noon for the ceremony, which will start at 2:00pm Eastern time (7:00pm UK time). If you want to watch live, you can go to http://www.outerbanks.tv/ They should be streaming live when the ceremony starts.